June 4, 2000

No Room at the TopAn account of the French assault on Annapurna finds the leader grabbed all the glory.

By BRUCE BARCOTT

TRUE SUMMIT
What Really Happened on the
Legendary Ascent of Annapurna. By David Roberts. Illustrated. 239 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $24.

eaders of Jon Krakauer's best-selling chronicle of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster may be surprised to learn that ''Into Thin Air''
is not the most popular mountaineering book of all time. The reigning champ, with 11 million copies sold, is Maurice Herzog's ''Annapurna,'' the story of the French mountaineers who in 1950 reached
the summit of Annapurna, the first of the world's 14 peaks above 26,000 feet to be scaled. Herzog's harrowing adventure, with its Gallic sense of drama, romance and camaraderie, concludes with a stirring final
line -- ''There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men'' -- that still inspires adventurers to answer the challenge of the mountains.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Annapurna ascent, which was yesterday, the American author and climber David Roberts revisits that historic expedition in ''True Summit'' and finds troubling
new meaning in Herzog's famous phrase. ''Other Annapurnas,'' it turns out, did exist -- in the memories of the author's own climbing mates. In order to preserve the legend of France's
greatest climb, and perhaps his own reputation as well, Herzog suppressed competing versions of the Annapurna climb for nearly 50 years.

The trouble began before the expedition left Paris. When the climbers were about to board their plane, Herzog, the expedition leader, surprised his comrades with a contract that forbade them from publishing anything about the
climb for five years. Thus Herzog assured himself the first word on Annapurna and denied his fellow climbers the chance to earn a little coin for their work. Herzog was a successful Parisian businessman, but his principal
climbers were three mountain guides from Chamonix -- Louis Lachenal, Lionel Terray and Gaston RŽbuffat -- who sacrificed their lucrative summer season for the unpaid chance at Annapurna. While Herzog's audience
later read that the climbers' ''only motive was a great ideal,'' his teammates silently gnashed their teeth. (In fairness, Roberts points out that the profits from ''Annapurna''
went to the French Mountain Federation, not to Herzog.)

On June 3, 1950, Herzog and Lachenal set out for the top, without supplemental oxygen, clad in thin leather boots. As he felt his feet go numb with frostbite, Lachenal initiated one of the most famous exchanges in climbing:

''If I go back,'' he asked Herzog, ''what will you do?''

''I should go on by myself,'' Herzog replied.

Continuing on meant the loss of Lachenal's toes; turning back meant the loss of Herzog's life. ''Then I'll follow you,'' the gallant montagnard said.

The exchange becomes all the more moving in light of the aftermath laid out in ''True Summit.'' Lachenal, toeless, melted into obscurity as Herzog, fingerless, became a national hero on the order of Jacques
Cousteau. Paris Match magazine celebrated Herzog in a cover story that failed to mention Lachenal at all and, incredibly, referred to the camera ''that accompanied him to the summit'' and captured the
famous image of Herzog holding the French tricolor aloft.

''It was as if the camera had been Herzog's only teammate on the summit, and the photo had taken itself,'' Roberts writes.

Lachenal's erasure continued even after his death in 1955. His Annapurna diary, which often conflicted with Herzog's narrative and exposed the expedition's infighting and tedium, fell under the posthumous guardianship
of an editor who prepared a published version cleansed of all passages that might tarnish the legend. The editor? Maurice Herzog.

The Annapurna myth began to crack when Lachenal's unexpurgated diaries and a biography of Rébuffat were published in 1996. Roberts uses those books and more recent interviews to give us a balanced overview of the
Annapurna expedition, but ''True Summit'' isn't merely a better-sourced retelling of a 50-year-old story. Roberts uses the new revelations to deliver a long delayed glory to Louis Lachenal and to
explore the tension between the demands of narrative, the duty of historical accuracy and the fallibility of memory.

Through a triumph of irony, Herzog alone among the climbers survives to commemorate the expedition's 50th anniversary. When Roberts interviewed him in 1999, Herzog offered no apologies. He had considered having each expedition
member write one chapter in the book, he explained, but that would have sold 1,000 copies at most. Herzog then asked Roberts rhetorically why the book had sold millions of copies, and provided his own answer: ''
'Annapurna' is a sort of novel. It's a novel, but a true novel.''

The thing about novels is they come neatly wrapped -- action is consistent with character, and events have meaning. Real life, especially at 26,000 feet, tends to fray with inconsistency and chance. In the case of Herzog, Roberts
concludes, his constant burnishing of the Annapurna legend wasn't necessarily cynical. It was more likely ''the fruit of memory's seizing again and again on disturbing, pivotal events, reshaping them
with each rehearsal, trying to find meaning where there was only happenstance.'' That, and the preservation of a fantastic story.